I recently got a copy of a new study called “The Entrepreneur’s Census,” created by Matt Shapiro of Yale. There are some pretty interesting data points in the survey regarding startup in Palo Alto, Boston and New York City. As a person interested in growing entrepreneurship in Boston, something cool I took away from the census is that
Founders move to Palo Alto to start companies
and
Boston founders are likely to be students to came to Boston and then started companies
First, a little info on the census, as taken from the report:
The study originated in January 2010 as a project to understand the recent increase in entrepreneurial activity and investment in New York City… In March, we undertook the task of gathering granular information regarding the venture communities in Boston, Palo Alto and New York… We received response from 307 entrepreneurs. Collectively, these businesses have created more than 1,300 jobs and paid more than $7 Million in annual rent.
I believe that, as Scott Kirsner says, Boston’s greatest renewable resource is the students who show up every year. While a number of the people who found companies in Boston seem to be here because of their education, I’m not convinced that enough is being done to keep students in Boston after they complete their education. We need to actively support some of the efforts underway to make people feel more comfortable starting businesses in Boston, like DartBoston, Greenhorn Connect, TechStars and the Mass Challenge. (and I think something else that would make students feel more at home would be if the local road system/drivers could be a bit less third world and behave a little more like the rest of the country. Street signs and lane markers would be a good start.)
Secondly, there has got to be a way to make Boston more of a destination for starting new companies. I am convinced that Boston is by far the second best place in the entire world to start a software/internet business (I am saying that this is a really good thing!) and somehow the area to get more people to realize this.
